Bill Sheehan
Well-known member
Hi friends, I continue to struggle with the George Formby-inspired "triplet strum", despite working on it for a few years now. I love the technique, which is demonstrated in many online instructional/tutorial videos, but to save my soul (as my Mom would have said), I cannot seem to master it. To clarify, it's the one where you go down with the index, down with the thumb, up with the index, and down again with the index. My main problem is that I can't decide if I should curl my middle, ring, and pinky fingers up during this process, or just let 'em fly open. A secondary problem is that when I attempt the triplet strum technique, it seems like I'm playing the uke way, way too hard and loud. So, in an effort to achieve an effect similar to that of the triplet strum, with a nice moderate touch and volume, I will often utilize a very quick and discreet "hammering-on" technique with certain chords (it won't work with every chord, so it has to be used somewhat sparingly), which produces the "trip-a-let" effect desired, but which employs primarily the fretting hand, and only secondarily the strumming hand (the index finger still has to do a "down-up-down" strumming motion, but that motion is, I believe, much easier than the motion involved in the "true" triplet strum technique, as it eliminates the thumb from the equation). I'm wondering if any of you have also opted for some version of a "faux" triplet strum? On a good day, used in moderate doses, it sounds pretty darn good, actually. I would love to post a little clip showing how I'm accomplishing it it, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet!
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